Volvo Cars sold just 42,537 vehicles globally in January, a 16% plunge from a year earlier that the Swedish automaker opted not to disclose as a standalone figure on its Wednesday release.
The company instead buried the result inside a three-month sales total, leaving investors and analysts to extract what amounts to Volvo‘s worst single month in nearly four years.
Volvo chose not to break out January separately, despite having previously reported November and December as individual months.
The Geely Holding-controlled company on Wednesday reported a combined November-to-January sales figure of 177,830 vehicles, a 7% year-over-year decline.
That number, however, is the product of deliberate aggregation.
Simple subtraction reveals why: the January standalone figure is a striking outlier, well below any monthly result Volvo has posted since early 2022.
Volvo sold 50,820 cars in January 2025 and 53,402 in January 2024.
The January 2026 figure of 42,537 represents a decline of roughly 20% from the two-year average and is comparable only to February 2022’s 42,067 vehicles — a month when the automaker explicitly blamed semiconductor shortages and supply chain constraints — not weaker demand — for the shortfall.
Powertrain Breakdown
The derived January figures show a sharply divergent picture across powertrain categories.
Fully electric vehicle sales rose 3.3% year-over-year to 10,027 units, the sole category to post growth.
Battery-electric models accounted for 23.6% of all sales in January, up from 19.1% a year earlier.
Launched globally last month, the EX60 is the first Volvo model built on the new SPA3 platform and became the model with the highest-ever range from Volvo.
Plug-in hybrid sales, however, tumbled 21.9% to 9,913 units, reversing the 28% growth that category had posted in January 2025.
Last month, speaking with The Independent, Volvo Cars‘ CEO Hakan Samuelsson said the brand had similar margins in fully electric and hybrid models.
Samuelsson – who led Volvo Cars between 2012 and 2022 – returned in April 2025 as the company’s CEO and President for a two-year term.
The steepest drop came from mild hybrids and internal combustion engine models, which fell 20.5% to 22,597 vehicles—a sign of weakening demand in Volvo’s traditional core segments.
Disclosure Method
Volvo‘s decision to report on a rolling three-month basis rather than disclosing monthly figures is not new, but the January 2026 data illustrates the problem with the practice.
By bundling November, December, and January into a single 177,830-vehicle total, the company presented investors with a 7% year-over-year decline — significantly less alarming than the 16.3% fall that January alone produced.
The question is whether Volvo‘s reporting cadence, which it frames as standard practice, functions as a form of information smoothing that delays market recognition of deteriorating trends.
The mechanics are straightforward.
November sales of 60,244 vehicles were down 10% from a year earlier, while December’s 75,049 vehicles actually rose 2% year-over-year.
Those two months acted as a buffer, diluting January’s collapse from 50,820 to 42,537 vehicles into a blended figure that looked far less severe.
Demand Weakness
January 2026’s 42,537 vehicles represent Volvo‘s weakest monthly sales figure in nearly four years.
The only comparable reading in the post-pandemic era is February 2022’s 42,067 vehicles — just 470 units lower — when global chip shortages were actively constraining the automaker’s production lines.
“Sales figures from the past three months highlight a challenging market across regions with continued pricing and competitive pressures, further worsened by unfavourable regulatory developments in the U.S.,” Volvo said in a statement.
The company commented only on the November-to-January period as a whole. It offered no explanation for the January results or for the reason why January was reported in a three-month period.
For the full year 2025, Volvo‘s global sales dropped 7% to 710,042 vehicles from a record 763,389 in 2024.
Fully electric vehicle deliveries fell 13% to 151,830 units even as the broader industry continued its electrification push.
Volvo Cars will report its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings results on Thursday, February 5.
